Postcards from the Funny Farm

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The expression: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water” seems especially appropriate for Google here at the beginning of 2008. I am no seo or blogging mmol genius but I do know a few things about logic and ethics and setting PayPerPost writers’ pagerank to zero is a choice lacking in both.

Under the guise of weeding out vacuous content from searches, they claim all blogs that have PayPerPost articles on them are less helpful than those who don’t and thus set their PageRank to zero. This is an example of a company thinking they will reinvent natural law to suit them because they can, not because they should. It’s going to bite them, the internet did not evolve to this point to be defined by one company.

I recall when I first got into using Google, it seemed like such a cool enterprise. The page was white with no ads and it had applications that were all utility, no fluff (ie; analytics, gmail …). Now, they have decided they know based on one criteria if a blog is helpful to the internet, this is ignorance at its height and I hope Google stops this practice. My how Google’s “feel” has changed for me.

As for me? I will continue to be a postie because it’s something I am good at and it’s something I profit from. That’s why Walt Disney, Rod Serling, Ray Kroc, Richard Carlso... did what they did. Last week I lost my PageRank of 4/10 when it was set to zero. I had a feeling this might happen when I read the news about what Google was doing to posties. But has my readership changed? It has gone up. Has my content changed? It has gotten better. The way I see it is this: Google figured the blogosphere would appreciate it if they targeted posties, and for the most part, they are probably right (check out Duncan Riley’s tone on Tech Crunch). But that doesn’t mean that weeding out all blogs with PayPerPosts on them will increase the value of a search. In fact, in many cases, it will keep good information out of a search. Is the only information we want on the internet that which is written without compensation? You might as well stop watching TV as far back as I Love Lucy.

To quote Michael Stipe: “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.” Emphasize: I feel fine.

I predict Izea (PayPerPost’s rebranding) and SocialSpark will revolutionize rankings in 3-6 months. You can come and tell me I was wrong if they don’t, but as for now I am making sure I focus 100% on my idea of what a good ranking is:

1. Monthly Traffic Goals
2. Inbound links
3. Comment counts, and
4. Quality content (paid or unpaid)

If I can succeed in these areas (which I can and do already) then I’ll take my PR0 with pride and look to other ranking systems like Izea’s RealRank to determine how I’m doing. To my fans/readers: fear not, I am neither down nor out. I will get better through moving away from Google’s PageRank system, not worse. Whether you like PayPerPost or not, I hope you see how throwing every blog out that uses it is harmful to the blogosphere.

Now, to close, I have a question and I promise not to pigeonhole you or throw YOU out if I don’t like your answer:

What do you think about Google setting blogs to zero for participating in PayPerPost?

Google Vilifies PayPerPost and PayPerPost Fights Back

By now you may have heard about what Google did in attempt to destroy a small startup company, PayPerPost. The story goes like this:

Google invented PageRank. They set the secret criteria websites are assigned a rank from that called “Page Rank.”

When PayPerPost came on the scene, they paid bloggers to write posts on given topics. As with any open platform on the web, some abused it and wrote short meaningless posts that met the criteria of the job but were basiclly just filler posts with no new content. Having said that, there is still the large potenial for PayPerPost posts to be even more effective sources of info on the web (which I THINK Google would see as a good thing.) That’s why I was was shocked to find out that Google becaise a couple months ago stripping every blog with PayPerPosts on it to a zero page rank.

Now the big irony: To get the decent paying jobs on PayPerPost, you mch have a high Page Rank. Google not only sent all blog with PayPerPost to the bottom of the snake-pool but they alsocut off the life dollars of “posties,” as they are called who were once making $500/month writing quality articles.

Google is protecting its interests just like Microsoft tried to do by making Netscape incompatible with its software. Google is going to find that spam sites and services are much more prevalent that PayPerPost writers. Many I have spoken to are fed up with worry what Adolf-Google will find immoral so they are doing PayPerPost when it sounds interesting. I’m in this camp. If I get a great idea from PPP idea, I am going to write and link it . If Google think that make my writing spam, they can sit on their thumb and spin. I predict: Google will change or start falling in the next 5 years. They will not be the best company with tactics like these.